Hi Salve! See below for my comments.
On Monday 24 July 2006 16:23, Salve J Nilsen wrote: > Shlomi Fish wrote: > > On Wednesday 19 July 2006 17:08, Salve J Nilsen wrote: > >> Just a wild thought... > >> > >> Would it be useful to check for references to community support channels > >> like mailing lists, IRC channels, public bug trackers and official web > >> pages? > > > > Interesting idea. One thing I should probably note is that ESR has this > > recommendation in "The Cathedral and the Bazaar": > > [http://catb.org/esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s10.htm >l] > > [Shlomi's experiences using different community channels] > > > What did I want to say? Yes, often the scope or maturity of the module > > does not justify a special "community" support channels. So I'm not sure > > whether penalising CPAN distros for not having this information is a good > > idea. But I'll have to think about it some more. > > I'd rather look at these metrics as a way of encouraging developers to > think about issues around community sustainment. That way, we can use "the > game" as a tool for software improvement in addition to improving the > codebase. Sure, that's probably good. > Which specific types of channels one should get points for may > warrant discussion, but if our goal is the improvement of the software, we > should at least encourage a mininmum number of ways to reach the users and > developers of a software project. > > I would suggest giving a point for explicitly (and in a consistently > machine-readable manner) stating the project's... > > * primary public bugtracker (frontpage URL) in use by it's users and > developers Well, we have rt.cpan.org for free. I believe module-starter and friends can put it in the YAML by default, while allowing you to override with something else (in case you have your own different bug tracker, as is the case for Catalyst with their Trac.). +1. > * main public mailing list (subscription URL) in use by it's > users and developers Well sometimes people segment between the mailing list for developers and mailing list for users of the software. I was involved with the Subversion development for a while, and they had one common mailing list. Then they decided to separate it into [EMAIL PROTECTED] and [EMAIL PROTECTED] I should also note that there are other types of mailing lists: 1. Mailing list for Version Control Commits. 2. Wine-style Licence/flames mailing list. (Just kidding). 3. Mailing list for individual components (Mozilla style madness, where I can never determine where to post something). 4. Etc. > * publically searchable archive of the mailing list > (search page URL) Well, Google as well as mail-archive.com, yahoogroups, googlegroups etc. give you an archive and a search for free. The archive should be publicly accessible, and have some search functionality. I set up a htdig search for the entire Perl Mongers domain, and it was a pretty straightforward experience. > * publically readable code repository (e.g. to a CVSWeb > or SVN::Web frontpage URL) Hmmmm... would a standard Subversion HTTP/S tree be enough? > > "Instant" communication channels like IRC and IM can of course be useful, > but since the chat logs usually aren't stored and indexed publically, their > lon term usefulness for the community are somewhat limited. True, but I solved many problems using IRC or at least got a lot of help. > > One could of course say distros that don't state ANY contact information or > community support channels could be "penalized", but I'd guess these > developers probably don't care enough about their software or "the game" to > feel much penalty from losing those points. Yes. > > The rest of us ("the CPAN/Perl community") can still get all the good > stuff, in addition to some hints on which projects one shouldn't expect any > improvements or support. :) > Yes. I daresay that sometimes a simple forward or developer email address is enough as a contact address. Recently I encountered some people in Israel (relatively new to the Internet scene) who seem to dislike mailing lists and prefer web forums and other mediums. Some of them even complained that some relatively low volume mailing lists were high volume, while in fact they were less than p5p and perl6-language, and much less than BugTraq or the Linux Kernel Mailing List. There is some software for multiplexing between a web forum, a newsgroup, a mailing list and an RSS feed, which could be useful. But we need to consider whether we also want a forum (a la Gabor's http://www.cpanforum.com/ ) as well. I wonder if there's anyway I can become automatically subscribed to all the distributions I've ever maintained on cpanforum.com? That would be cool. Gabor, can you shed some light on this issue? Regards, Shlomi Fish --------------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomi Fish [EMAIL PROTECTED] Homepage: http://www.shlomifish.org/ Chuck Norris wrote a complete Perl 6 implementation in a day but then destroyed all evidence with his bare hands, so no one will know his secrets.
